A new study just released by Pingdom claims that 49 of the top 100 blogs in the world are currently using WordPress. Wow!

The stats are very impressive. But I have to say from my own perspective what has been even more impressive is how WordPress has grown as a platform. My clients consistently rely on my to make good decisions and electing to devote much of my energy towards utilizing WordPress has been among my best decisions.

If you have ever worked with me, or heard me speak than you know very well that I always am leaning towards WordPress as the content management system that I recommend and yes, much of this has to do with the simple but truthful fact that WordPress happens to be the one platform that I know pretty well.

But beyond my own knowledge of WordPress there are a number of other really compelling reasons that I steer my clients in this direction and I’ll be blunt in saying that one of the biggest reasons is due to an amazing community that surrounds this particular software. That is not to in any way say that the communities around other software is in any way lacking, but I can say for sure the WordPress community in particular is amazing. And as a person running a business focused on Digital Planning and Digital Identity Management, that community is a major value add.

Beyond the community, and in truth largely as a result of this community, there is also a very healthy ecosystem of products, programs and vendors that has really evolved – and again this is a real value add for my own business.

Of course we all like to dream… and maybe one day our site will grown and we’ll need to get an upgraded hosting plan and we’ll have 10’s of thousands of fans on Facebook and 100’s of comments for every post and massive amounts of page views – well guess what! WordPress can now make a legitimate claim to be able to grow with your own dreams and growth – if you look through the Pingdom list of site you can see that clearly some of these site are seeing some massive traffic.

The WordPress core team has consistently evolved and moved this platform forward – I have been a personal user for I think 4 years now, and it has been really great to see how they continue to evolve this product. And moving forward, it does seem that the WordPress team is very focused on the future as well and they will continue to roll out innovations that will allow WordPress to continue it’s amazing growth rate. Again, from my perspective this is very encouraging as I can say with confidence to my clients that not only is this a great addition to your business today – but it will actually be an even better investment in the future.

So, while I know not everything is about numbers, none-the-less, this would seem to be a very nice endorsement for WordPress, particularly if you examine this the comparisons of the 2009 study versus the results just released.